


Blood in The Water

by xantissa



Series: Uncommon Allies [2]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 07:07:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xantissa/pseuds/xantissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your security sucks, though.” The drawl became more amused.</p><p>Damien raised both his eyebrows. His security did not, under any circumstances, suck.</p><p>“I still have security?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood in The Water

San Lorenzo, besides being almost completely his, had the most wonderful climate ever. It was warm, but never unbearably so. The dry, Mediterranean climate agreed with him and the kinds of clothes he liked to wear, the designer summer suits looked positively dashing on him. Still, when all was said and done, he liked to swim in the evenings. A shower or a bath didn’t really wash out all the dirt he came in contact with doing business. The pitiful drug barons or twisted gun runners filled him with distaste but Damien knew that in just a few years it wouldn’t be him coming to clients but the other way around. He was slowly but surely establishing himself as the one person who could bankroll any deal, any business and well, most of the world’s governments too.

He liked great food and expensive alcohols, exquisite women came in as a package deal with the kind of money he dealt with. The sex certainly helped with keeping him in shape but he kept the daily regime of swimming to make sure he wouldn’t let himself go.

The villa he lived in now was built to his exact specifications with unbeatable security and all the comforts a man such as himself would ever need. He had three pools, two for quests and one next to his bedroom, a private one. All he needed to do was step through the French doors and would be met with the heady aroma of jasmine flowers and citrus trees, would hear the soft splash of the water on the pool. On a small table surrounded by four lounge chairs stood a bottle of his favorite cognac the Camus Cognac Cuvee rested on the tabletop with a single glass already waiting. Next to it was a small selection of peeled fruit and tiny canapés. It amused him that he could drink alcohol that cost two and a half thousand dollars for a tiny bottle, while when he was young, he didn’t see that much money in a year.

Bypassing the spread he shucked off the white bath robe and dove smoothly into the water. He was older now, he was well fed and healthy. He was not the same half starved kid trying to survive in the shadowed side streets of Zagreb. He was the ultimate self made man, he taught himself manners, trained his body language to project only class and self assurance, ruthlessly studied history, philosophy, politics and religion to make sure he always knew more than the people he talked with.

The regime of swimming was just one of many rituals designed to create Damien Moreau, the shadowy power of the world. He was going to be untouchable.

When he finished the fifteenth lap he pulled up from the water, muscles pleasantly burning. As he straightened out and turned towards the chairs to grab a towel, he paused.

He wasn’t alone.

In the chair furthest away from him sat a short, stocky man. He had his legs carelessly propped up on the opposite chair and was eating the canapés while drinking his horribly expensive cognac.

He was dressed in a distasteful pair of black jeans with fraying edges and a long sleeved, back top. He had both ears pierced, the silver hoops catching moonlight. He also wore a lot of jewelry. At least two necklaces and a bunch of tacky, colorful bracelets on his wrist, a watch on a ridiculously wide leather band. He even had fingerless gloves and heavy work boots. His hair was short, with a definite curl to it, obviously just growing out of a military cut. He also had shoulder holster in plain sight. Two guns under each arm and a string of knives on either side. He seemed relaxed, looking at Damien with a smirk on his lips and challenge in his eyes. He was also stunningly good looking.

Damien had to admit, the pictures he got didn’t really do the man justice.

The way he sat relaxed, so confident as to appear cocksure and eating Damien’s food like he didn’t have a care in the world both infuriated Damien as well as drove down the point that there probably was no use in calling his security.

He of course recognized the man immediately.

Eliot Spencer.

The man who’d robbed Keller blind at the time when half of Damien’s men were … well, trying to do the same thing, only it seemed that Eliot Spencer was far more skilled at it than all of them put together.

His file was both thick and surprisingly sparse. There were dozens of rumors, crimes attributed to him but very little actual, hard data. Most of his sources agreed that Spencer was ex-military. Probably black ops of some kind, most also agreed that he was an American. It didn’t surprise Damien, most of his best men were first broken in to the job by the US government.

He was rumored to be a thief, a bodyguard, a gun for hire. A high end hitter that in a few very short years got himself a reputation for getting shit done for the right price and keeping his mouth shut about it, too. It was remarkable really, because four years ago nobody had even heard of Eliot Spencer, and now the man was already a name that was both recognized and respected.

Moreau could appreciate it, respect an ambitious man when he saw one. What really caught his attention was not the supposed kill score on the man’s file, but the bodies that weren’t there. It struck him as significant that the only bodies found in locations where Spencer was known to be were only the ones somebody paid for. No dead cops, no dead bodyguards. It meant that besides knowing a truly frightening amount of ways to kill a man, Spencer obviously knew when not to kill. He was not some gun totting, half mad macho man with a desire for carnage like most of the ex special ops in Damien’s employ. No, that man used a carefully measured amount of violence in order to achieve previously asserted goals.

“Heard you were looking for me.” The man drawled in an accent that Damien couldn’t place at first. “Been in the neighborhood and decided to drop by and introduce myself.”

His first reaction was that there wasn’t a single inhabited building within a hundred miles from his villa and second was that he was going to have the person gathering info on Spencer killed first thing in the morning.

It also kind of started occurring to him that Eliot Spencer might be a bit much to handle. He expected a simple hitter, another gun for hire. One with maybe a bit more smarts than all the others he’d met before. It was occurring to him that he just might have underestimated Eliot a bit.

The man in front of him not only robbed Keller, he was probably the source of information that made Damien make a move on Keller’s compound. It had bothered him, ever since, why the thief had risked his life by entering the manor while Damien’s men were all over it. It occurred to him now that Spencer didn’t enter the manor behind him. He actually orchestrated the whole thing. Keller’s security was so damn tight, that the man joked that the only thing that could break it down would be a full frontal assault by an army. And that was exactly what Damien Moreau had given him. Over fifty of his men armed with rocket launchers and M16 with Damien’s money and influence making sure nobody would hear anything that night. He’d broken down the defenses and the badly dressed punk in front of him had strolled over the ruins and taken what he wanted.

He’d used Damien.

He honestly couldn’t remember the last time somebody dared to trick him like that and damn, but he wanted to murder that man with own bare hands. Or maybe fuck him, and wasn’t that a surprise since he’d never thought himself gay, but he wasn’t blind either and when Spencer smiled even Damien had trouble shrugging off that amount of charm.

 

Damien walked over to the other man and sat down on the nearest available chair. He noticed that there was another empty glass next to the bottle of cognac and it made him even more livid to think that this punk wearing leather bracelets, colorful stones and feather for gods sake, had rummaged though his home enough to find another glass. Damien smiled pleasantly as he poured himself the expensive alcohol. He was going to kill this punk.

Messily.

Damien briefly entertained going for one of the concealed guns around the pool but he had no idea how long he was here or how familiar the other man got with his home and the idea of lunging for the gun only to find it gone was not one he wanted to entertain. Besides there was something unnerving in the way Spencer was relaxed, sprawling all over the furniture and gleefully eating the last of the little canapés.

“You have a great chef.” Spencer praised, washing the food down with the expensive alcohol.

“I know.” Damien answered mildly, thinking how he would like to strangle the man with his bare hands.

“I prefer beer though.” The man’s drawl was gritting on his last nerve.

Damien made a small sound of disgust.

“How very American of you.”

The ex soldier didn’t acknowledge the snipe.

“Your security sucks, though.” The drawl became more amused.

Damien raised both his eyebrows. His security did not, under any circumstances, suck.

“I still have security?” He asked, honestly surprised. If his men let this guy through and weren’t lying somewhere dying right this instance, Damien would make sure they regretted it. Terminally.

“Kind of.” The man shrugged. “They may even be functional again one day.”

Damien spent a lot of money and resources to train his security exactly to his liking. He was going to kill the punk. Messily. Very, very messily.

“Why did you come here?” Moreau ventures eventually, tired of the little chat they seemed to be having at his expense.

The younger man shifted, letting his legs fall back to the floor with a heavy thud. The movement stretched the black top over his muscled chest, giving Damien a reminder of just how dangerous the man sitting in front of him was.

The American looked him in the eyes, the steel blue eyes hardening instantly into a mask that made the man look ten years older and infinitely more dangerous.

“You see, when you shoot at me when I’m breaking into your house? That’s just natural, comes with the job, it’s nothing to get personal about. But you try to set out a hit on me?” He grinned, but it was not a smile Damien wanted to see directed at him ever again. “That, I take personal offence to.”

Still, there were worse men that had threatened him before.

“You stole from me.” His voice was even, ever so slightly condescending and his face clear. No two bit gun for hire was going to scare Damien Moreau.

There was something that flickered briefly in the younger man’s expression. Something very like respect, or maybe surprise. It seemed that not many people stood up to Eliot Spencer too.

“Not from you. From a third party.” Spencer corrected.

“Who paid you?” Damien shot back, irritated now. No one told him no.

The man smiled, wide and cold. He had surprisingly expressive face for somebody who made walking the shadows his career.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

And yes, his file said it too. The man was imprisoned in at least four third world country prisons and never once sold out his employers. He delivered the goods three out of the four times too. He made it part of his reputation that he never rolled on his clients.

“So what was this little thing supposed to mean?” Damien asked, deliberately condescending, taking a long sip of the cognac. “If you wanted to kill me, you would have done that already.”

“Revenge.” He stood up, pushing the chair back with a horrible screech. Honestly, the man had no class whatsoever. And all that jewelry set Damien’s teeth on edge.

“What, you thought I would be so terrified of your prowess that I would promise never to bother you again?” He snared.

The former solder smiled again, and it occurred to Moreau just how damn short he actually was.

“It was a statement. You send your bruisers after me, I will turn around and make my displeasure known to you personally. And in the mean time? Have fun saving your reputation when it leaks out that a single man took out all of your personal security.”

Damien internally cringed. He started suspecting this was the reason for their little chat. Spencer was adding blood to the water so that other sharks would circle in. Simple, brilliant and a damn effective plan. The younger man seemed, above all, effective in his actions.

Damien was going to kill him.

With his bare hands.

“Mr Spencer!” He called out after the retreating figure. As the American stopped, and turned to look at him again with a questioning tilt of his head, he continued. ”Work for me.”

He had no idea what made him offer that. The younger man irritated him beyond belief, he was uncultured, painfully American, drawling like a hick... but he had also more skill than anyone Damien ever met in this business and managed to use Damien’s power to his own purposes twice already. First using Damien’s men to break down Keller’s defenses and now using Damien’s reputation for having the best security money could buy against him.

“Why?” This time it was the ex soldier that asked the question.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now if I let opportunities pass me by.”

Eliot Spencer laughed out loud, it was a surprisingly attractive sound. Low and rich, it shivered down Moreau’s spine causing strange, uncomfortable reactions in his gut.

“I’m not for sale.” There was something in the way the younger man spoke those words that made Damien think there was some hidden meaning.

“Every man has his price.” He countered softly. He knew the darkest, the most base things that hid in humans soul. He saw it all, he hasn’t believed in ideals in a very, very long time.

Eliot Spencer nodded, he too had no illusions.

“If you find the right price.” Spencer threw out, a challenge clear in his stance.

Damien Moreau lifted his glass in a toast “I’ll be seeing you again, then.”

And he would. Six months later, in Belgrade, they would meet again and strike a deal that would change both their lives forever.

 

The End


End file.
